Help me challenge this player in melee combat without going overboard [3.5]

[fishyfishyfishy]

In a gestalt game I have a player who is a Fighter 2/ Warblade 7//Artificer 9. He uses metamagic spell trigger on wands of wraithstrike, swift fly, swift invisibility and occasionally uses blink to great effect. He has a ring of counterspells that the rest of the full caster party are happy to fill with dispel magic. He doesn't have any obvious weaknesses besides dispel, and even then he is a force to be reckoned with. Warblade has given him great counters from iron heart and diamond mind schools. The other main tank in the party has at least one exploitable weakness in the form of a low reflex save, even if I can't touch that guy any other way without serious cheese. Any advice the playground can offer for CR appropriate combat encounters?

[Alefiend]

In a gestalt game I have a player who is a Fighter 2/ Warblade 7//Artificer 9. He uses metamagic spell trigger on wands of wraithstrike, swift fly, swift invisibility and occasionally uses blink to great effect. He has a ring of counterspells that the rest of the full caster party are happy to fill with dispel magic. He doesn't have any obvious weaknesses besides dispel, and even then he is a force to be reckoned with. Warblade has given him great counters from iron heart and diamond mind schools. The other main tank in the party has at least one exploitable weakness in the form of a low reflex save, even if I can't touch that guy any other way without serious cheese. Any advice the playground can offer for CR appropriate combat encounters?

Have an NPC with a similar build call him out. Use his tactics against him.

[Drogorn]

Who are the antagonists in your campaign?

Also, in reference to your name: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUusX1Js6R0

[Segev]

Present the party with challenges that require something other than melee combat to solve. Investigations, exploration, etc.

Ambushes and sudden traps can catch him without his buffs up, too.

Even with wraith strike, he's vulnerable to incorporeal touch attacks, and is hard-pressed to attack incorporeal critters hiding INSIDE things. Even with flight, he can't avoid being near walls, ceilings, or floors at all times when in a dungeon or the like. Have Shadows or Wraiths or Allips lurk in the floor, walls, or ceiling and attack out of it. Require spot checks to even notice what's causing the sudden feelings of weakness or madness.

[Flickerdart]

Throw multiple foes at him, each using accurate attacks that do little damage. No matter how much damage his attacks deal, he can only kill one of them per shot. If these guys are armed with fireball style attacks, then you can deal steady damage to everyone and make him and the tank question exactly how tanky they're being.

[fishyfishyfishy]

Who are the antagonists in your campaign?

The party is on the tail end of the Red Hand of Doom adventure module, adopted for Eberron. The main antagonists are a group of hobgoblins who worship Tiamat (I refluffed Tiamat to be a Rakshasa Raja Demon Lord trapped in a pocket dimension. Their goal was to free her.) The adventure is quickly coming to a close, as they have recently defeated the leader of the army of hobgoblins.


Present the party with challenges that require something other than melee combat to solve. Investigations, exploration, etc.

Ambushes and sudden traps can catch him without his buffs up, too.

Even with wraith strike, he's vulnerable to incorporeal touch attacks, and is hard-pressed to attack incorporeal critters hiding INSIDE things. Even with flight, he can't avoid being near walls, ceilings, or floors at all times when in a dungeon or the like. Have Shadows or Wraiths or Allips lurk in the floor, walls, or ceiling and attack out of it. Require spot checks to even notice what's causing the sudden feelings of weakness or madness.

Non combat encounters aren't an issue. I feel I can challenge the group with those just fine.

I like the wraith/allip idea. That could turn out really challenging. The only person equipped to fight such enemies is the Swift Hunter/Cleric, and she dumped charisma.

[fishyfishyfishy]

Throw multiple foes at him, each using accurate attacks that do little damage. No matter how much damage his attacks deal, he can only kill one of them per shot. If these guys are armed with fireball style attacks, then you can deal steady damage to everyone and make him and the tank question exactly how tanky they're being.

I noticed that in the fights with dragons, area attacks work really well. Those breath weapons dealt massive damage even when they had energy resistance up and running.

The main tank of the party is a Druid//Barbarian/Fist of the Forest/Warshaper. He "tanks" by drawing aggro from enemies by being a massive and terrifying bear. And as I said before, his weaknesses are few but easily exploited. Low reflex and touch AC make him vulnerable to most damage dealing spells.

[Eldariel]

If you want to martially challenge him, something like a divine Gish could also work. DMM: Persisting Ordained Champion or Ruby Knight Vindicator; other side of the same coin, so to speak.

Divine magic can pump touch AC relevantly so Wraithstrike isn't an autohit (Magic Vestment on a Ghost Touch Armor + Shield for instance) and of course both sides have both, miss chance and counters to it.


You could also make a Psionic Gish, e.g. Illithid Slayer or hell, it can even be monstrous. A Gishtastic Giant Warrior Shaman or a martially minded Illithid or classed Angel/Guardinal/Eladrin/Devil/Demon (Outsiders tend to, by nature, wield both sword'n'magic) or some such.

Basically, any hostile party can have members that wield a combination of some kind of magic and physical might, and those tend to be best suited to evenly match a spellsword. Casters can do it too but those fights tend to be more about strategy and less about the actual combat prowess, while two spellswords can actually test their mettle quite evenly, both with their own sets of tricks.

EDIT: Hobgoblins, huh? Well, they tend to be smart and while not automatically magic-inclined, I wouldn't bat an eye at some elite guard composed of some Hobgoblin gishes wielding Iron Heart combined with arcana, divine magic or psionics (Diamond Mind combines really well with Psionics too).